Small Lies Quotes & Sayings

And somewhere
out there,
in the river of
addicts,
alcoholics,
wife beaters,
doormats,
overeducated legalized thieves,
fascist police,
and bitter rivalries
someone told me
it's a good city,
and I don't know
what's more frightening — Phil Volatile

The truth can seem awfully small and insignificant when compared to a mountain of lies. — Terry Goodkind

He stared at her. "How is it that you're cute, sexy as hell, and smarter than anyone I know?"
She gave him a small smile. "It's a gift. — Jill Shalvis

[S]ecrets are like stars. They blaze inside the heart and ultimately could be explosive. But there are two types of secrets. Small secrets, like small stars, will eventually burn out. With time and space they lose their importance and simply vanish. No harm done. But big secrets, like massive stars, with time and constant fear grow stronger, creating a gravitational pull that eventually ... When they get so big, they become a black hole. — Jennifer Jabaley

Beautiful Lies is a book every woman should read. Jennifer Strickland weaves the powerful story of her life throughout each chapter while emphasizing transformational truths from God's Word. Her vulnerability, exquisite writing style, and practical take-home applications make this book the ideal choice for personal or for small group use. — Carol Kent

Sleeper in the Valley
The river sings and cuts a hole in the meadow,
madly hooking white tatters on the rushes.
light escalades the strong hills. The small
valley bubbles with sunbeams like a beerglass.
The young conscript bareheaded and open-mouthed,
his neck cooling in the blue watercress;
he's sleeping. The grass soothes his heaviness,
the sunlight is raining in his green bed,
baking away the aches of his body. He smiles,
as a sick child might smile himself asleep.
O Nature, rock him warmly, he is cold.
The fields no longer make his hot eyes weep.
He sleeps in the sun, a hand on his breast lies open,
at peace. He has two red holes in his left side. — Robert Lowell

The truth of anything at all doesn't lie in someone's account of it. It lies in all the small facts of the time. An advertisement in a paper, the sale of a house, the price of a ring. — Josephine Tey

They never tell a lie, not a small fabrication, not a partial truth, nor any gross unreal statement. No lies at all, so they have nothing to hide. They are a group of people who are not afraid to have their minds open. — Marlo Morgan

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In — Douglas Adams

That was how dishonesty and betrayal started, not in big lies but in small secrets. — Amy Tan

It lies here deep in the heart, the small chest of pain
Sharp words like daggers placed it here
To fill with hurt
In filling it grew heavy and drug me down
For to not feel is not to live
Until I rest at last in dirt
The worst of you got the best of me ... — Neil Leckman

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. — Anonymous

O LAKE OF LIGHT" Risen from the milky sward I saw the one I love with flower And on her breast an unborn moon O wondrous moon! O lake of light! The grass so green is turning white O moon, O wondrous lake of light! Milk of fire upon her tongue Drew birds of jade and betel gum Run river run! The world of late grown small Now achieves its just dimension The one I love grown big with flower Wheels within the lunar hour Birds of jade in milky fire Mitigate the heart's desire Then run, river, run, as runs the sun For none are born except the one That lies upon the breast undone The moon unborn is chill as night The heart is like a lake of light Flower, moon, milk of fire These together do conspire Take wing, strange birds, take wing! - Henry Miller — Arthur Hoyle

It may be that true happiness lies in the conviction that one has irremediably lost happiness. Then we can begin to move through life without hope or fear, capable of finally enjoying all the small pleasures, which are the most lasting. — Maria Luisa Bombal

[Julie] had lived a great deal among lies, before plumping for a small life of her own, a sincere and restricted life from which all pretense, even in matters sensual, was banished. How many crazy decisions and allegiances to successive aspects fo the truth! Had she not, one day when her costume for a fancy dress had demanded short hair, cut off the great chestnut mane that fell below her waist when she let it down? 'I could have hired a wig,' she thought. 'I might also, at a pinch, have passed the rest of my life with Becker or Espivant. If it comes to that, I could also have gone on stirring puddings in a saucepan at Carneilhan. The things "one might have done" are, in fact, the things one could not do ... — Colette

And I thought of the Transit of Venus: that though the bodies be vast and distant, and their motions occult, their hesitations retrograde, one could, I thought, with exceeding care and preparation, observe, and in their distance, know them, triangulate to arrive at the ambits of their motivation; and that in this calculation alone, one might banish uncertainty, and know at last what constituted other bodies, and how small the gulf that lies between us all. — M T Anderson

We don't always know the details of our future. We do not know what lies ahead. We live in a time of uncertainty. We are surrounded by challenges on all sides. Occasionally discouragement may sneak in to our day; frustration may invite itself into our thinking; doubt might enter about the value of our work. In these dark moments Satan whispers in our ears that we will never be able to succeed, that the price isn't work the effort, and that our small part will never make a difference. He, the father of all lies, will try to prevent us from seeing the end from the beginning. — Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Do not think that love in order to be genuine has to be extraordinary. What we need is to love without getting tired. Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies. — Mother Teresa

Seawrack is singing in the place that lies beyond this place. Listen there, and you cannot help but hear her." With her I sang a few more words in the language of those whom Mora had once called the People of That Town. "'In our small house with shining windows, I waited till the tide brought your wreck through. Lie here beside me in the darkness. I'll wake to life the corpse I say is — Gene Wolfe

What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us.
Ralph Waldo Emerson — Catherine E. McLean

A small lie needs a bodyguard of bigger lies to protect it. — Winston S. Churchill

Small truths have greater power than big lies. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I'll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart -like something dead- lies buried.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I've spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.
You won't find a new country, won't find another shore.
This city will always pursue you.
You'll walk the same streets, grow old
in the same neighbourhoods, turn grey in these same houses.
You'll always end up in this city. Don't hope for things elsewhere:
there's no ship for you, there's no road.
Now that you've wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you've destroyed it everywhere in the world. — Constantine P. Cavafy

Uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of — Douglas Adams

Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular. — Barbara Kingsolver

He [the "specialist"] is one who, out of all that has to be known in order to be a man of judgment, is only acquainted with one science, and even of that one only knows the small corner in which he is an active investigator. He even proclaims it as a virtue that he takes no cognisance of what lies outside the narrow territory specially cultivated by himself, and gives the name of "dilettantism" to any curiosity for the general scheme of knowledge. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

The way to an extraordinary life lies in exploring ourselves, in learning of our greatest capacities and in understanding who we fundamentally are as people. Then, equipped with this essential knowledge, we can go out into the world to do what we have been wired to do and create the goodness that we have been placed here to create. Remember, you have a duty to shine, and this world will be less of a place if you choose to play small with your life. — Robin S. Sharma

The first trick to lying is to tell the truth as often as possible. If out start lying about everything, big and small, it becomes impossible to keep things straight and you'll get caught. Once suspicion is planted it becomes exponentially harder to sell the next lie. — Victoria Schwab

He's writing his name in water," I said. "What's that?" It was the half-regretful term - borrowed from the headstone of John Keats - that Crabtree used to describe his own and others' failure to express a literary gift through any actual writing on paper. Some of them, he said, just told lies; others wove plots out of the gnarls and elf knots of their lives and then followed them through to resolution. That had always been Crabtree's chosen genre - thinking his way into an attractive disaster and then attempting to talk his way out, leaving no record and nothing to show for his efforts but a reckless reputation and a small dossier in the files of the Berkeley and New York City police departments. — Michael Chabon

I sit in front of the fireplace, with his arm around me solid as the back of a chair. I walk along the breakwater in the soothing Vancouver drizzle, the halftones of the seashore, the stroking of the small waves. In front of me is the Pacific, which sends up sunset after sunset, for nothing; at my back are the improbable mountains, and beyond them an enormous barricade of land.

Toronto lies behind it, at a great distance, burning in thought like Gomorrah. At which I dare not look. — Margaret Atwood

And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel - and the house is full of them, games and lies - is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

("One Of The Hungry Ones") — Holly Phillips

A safety net of small white lies can be the bedrock of a successful marriage. You wouldn't believe how cheaply I can do a kitchen renovation. — Anna Quindlen

When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is to co-operate with evil, and in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. — Theodore Dalrymple

Because in a small dark room, a broken child lies on a filthy bed and stares up at a high window.
He waits for me, too.
And I - I who have failed at everything and have failed everyone - I must not, I cannot, I will not fail him. — Jennifer Donnelly

We are the Western World. We read, see, think. Left. To. Right. We can't help it.
..The problem with Top to Bottom is that it's unAmerican. We want to begin in the depths and climb our way upward. But our typographic system argues against this and wins, and images follow suit.
..What you have to be careful to remember about Big and Small, is that they can extend to infinity in either direction. Consider: Big can always be bigger and Small smaller. The atom is the Universe and vice versa. And they're both identical.
..Left to Right, Top to Bottom, Big and Small; on a two-dimensional plane, all of these tools rely on a relative truth. Now we come to In Front Of and In Back of, which for us are big, fat lies. Very useful though, and the first of many at your disposal. — Chip Kidd

You lie," he said. "All men lie when they are afraid. Some tell many lies, some but a few. Some have only one great lie they tell so often that they almost come to believe it ... though some small part of them will always know that it is still a lie, and that will show upon their faces. — George R R Martin

The cause of all trouble, the root of all sorrow, the dread of every man lies in this one small word - sin. It has crippled the nature of man ... It has caused man to be caught in the devil's trap. — Billy Graham

In essence, art lies embedded in the conceptual leap between pieces, not in the pieces themselves. And simply put, there's a greater conceptual jump from one work of art to the next than from one work of craft to the next. The net result is that art is less polished - but more innovative - than craft. The differences between five Steinway grand pianos - demonstrably works of consummate craftsmanship - are small compared to the differences between the five Beethoven Piano concerti you might perform on those instruments. A — David Bayles

Here lies a gentleman bold
Who was so very brave
He went to lengths untold,
And on the brink of the grave
Death had on him no hold.
By the world he set small store
He frightened it to the core
Yet somehow, by Fate's plan,
Though he'd lived a crazy man,
When he died he was sane once more. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

Her suspicion brings me a small sense of gratification. She thinks I'm lying about something. Now we're even.
Lake — Colleen Hoover

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates. — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

After one moment of gripped immobility, the queen bent to kiss the king lightly on one closed eyelid, then on the other. She said, 'I love your eyes.' She kissed him on either cheek, near the small lobe of his ear. 'I love your ears, and I love'-she paused as she kissed him gently on the lips-'every single one of your ridiculous lies.' The king opened his eyes and smiled at the queen in a companionship that was as unassailable as it was unfathomable. — Megan Whalen Turner

The true Christians are the true citizens, lofty of purpose, resolute in endeavor, ready for a hero's deeds, but never looking down on their task because it is cast in the day of small things; scornful of baseness, awake to their own duties as well as to their rights, following the higher law with reverence, and in this world doing all that in their power lies, so that when death comes they may feel that humanity is in some degree better because they lived. — Theodore Roosevelt

The world is big but it is comprehensible, says R. Buckminster Fuller. But it seems to me that the world is not nearly big enough and that any portion of its surface, left unpaved and alive, is infinitely rich in details and relationships, in wonder, beauty, mystery comprehensible only in part. The very existence of existence is itself suggestive of the unknown - not a problem, but a mystery. We will never get to the bottom of it, never know the whole of even so small and trivial and useless and precious a place as Aravaipa. Therein lies our redemption. — Edward Abbey

That would prove a recurring trait in him - the need to cover up his inadequacies with small lies and slight exaggerations. To pretend knowledge he didn't have. I forgave him this flaw for I knew what it hid; I could feel his need like a pleasantly raw wound in my mouth, and I could not help but savour it. — Jason Heller

Some people give theirselves a certain number of white weeks once in a year, when they do not drink a single drop of alcohol. It is really wise. I myself have a few weeks per year, let us call them white or black, when I am not interested in the world around. When I come back from this isolation of the news, I realize that I have missed nothing significant. We live in the rain of disinformation and rumors, where the truth is a very small number. In those weeks of dissociation I seek for knowledge that lies within me. — Henning Mankell

I heard the stories and registered them perhaps the way we all, from within our detailed lives, perceive facts--that is, we do not perceive them at all until they have been repeated countless times and, even then, understand them only partially. So much information is lost that every small loss provokes inexplicable grief. Power must know this. Power must know how fatigued human nature is, and how unready we are to listen, and how willing we are to settle for lies. Power must know that, ultimately, we would rather not know. — Hisham Matar

The joy of a small town lies in its unchanging nature. — Bryce Courtenay

Where the subject lies so far beyond our reach, the difference between the highest and the lowest of human understandings may indeed be calculated as infinitely small; yet the degree of weakness may perhaps be measured by the degree of obstinacy and dogmatic confidence. — Edward Gibbon

The weak point in the whole of Carlyle's case for aristocracy lies, indeed, in his most celebrated phrase. Carlyle said that men were mostly fools. Christianity, with a surer and more reverent realism, says that they are all fools. This doctrine is sometimes called the doctrine of original sin. It may also be described as the doctrine of the equality of men. But the essential point of it is merely this, that whatever primary and far-reaching moral dangers affect any man, affect all men. All men can be criminals, if tempted; all men can be heroes, if inspired. And this doctrine does away altogether with Carlyle's pathetic belief (or any one else's pathetic belief) in "the wise few." There are no wise few. Every aristocracy that has ever existed has behaved, in all essential points, exactly like a small mob. — G.K. Chesterton

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is ... in some small way to become evil oneself. One's standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control. I think if you examine political correctness, it has the same effect and is intended to. — Theodore Dalrymple

One of biggest lies in politics is the lie that Republicans are the party of big business. Big business does great with big government. Big business is very happy to climb in bed with big government. Republicans are and should be the party of small business and of entrepreneurs. — Ted Cruz

Truth lies in a small compass! The Aristotelians say, all truth is contained in Aristotle, in one place or another. Galileo makes Simplicius say so, but shows the absurdity of that speech by answering all truth is contained in a lesser compass, namely, in the alphabet. — Johann Georg Ritter Von Zimmermann

Life presents itself as a continual deception, in small matters as well as in great. If it has promised, it does not keep its word, unless to show how little desirable the desired object was; hence we are deluded now by hope, now by what was hoped for. If it has given, it did so in order to take. The enchantment of distance shows us paradises that vanish like optical illusions, when we have allowed ourselves to be fooled by them. Accordingly, happiness lies always in the future, or else in the past, and the present may be compared to a small dark cloud driven by the wind over the sunny plain; in front of and behind the cloud everything is bright, only it itself always casts a shadow. Consequently, the present is always inadequate, but the future is uncertain, and the past irrecoverable. — Arthur Schopenhauer

The shadow's potential to destroy is undeniable. Lightning might strike a house and set it ablaze. But harness the electricity and the same house can be illuminated with the turn of a switch. Consider a vaccine. Included in the serum is a small amount of the disease. Light needs the dark. It is the order of the universe. What would thaw in the spring if we didn't have a winter to endure? Consciousness is conditioned against its absence, Jung wrote. Amputate the serpent's tail and the power to heal lies within. Anna — Jill Alexander Essbaum

There are small truths and big truths, just as there are smal lies and big lies, and along those truths and lies run the questions that were never asked and those that were never answered. — R.J. Ellory

All the great enterprises of the world are run by a few smart men: their aides and associates run down by rapid stages to the level of sheer morons. Everyone knows that this is true of government, but we often forget that it is equally true of private undertakings. In the average great bank, or railroad, or other corporation the burden of management lies upon a small group. The rest are ciphers. — H.L. Mencken

We ought, so far as it lies within our power, to aspire to immortality, and do all that we can to live in conformity with the highest that is within us; for even if it is small in quantity, in power and preciousness, it far excels all the rest. — Aristotle.

In a small Swiss city sits an international organization so obscure and secretive ... Control of the institution, the Bank for International Settlements, lies with some of the world's most powerful and least visible men: the heads of 32 central banks, officials able to shift billions of dollars and alter the course of economies at the stroke of a pen. — Keith Bradsher

The city lies at the galaxy's dust-stranded edge, enfolding a moon that used to be a world, or a world that used to be a moon; no one is certain anymore. In the mornings its skies are radiant with clouds like the plumage of a bird ever-rising, and in the evenings the stars scatter light across skies stitched and unstitched by the comings and goings of fire-winged starships. Its walls are made of metal the color of undyed silk, and its streets bloom with aleatory lights, small solemn symphonies, the occasional duel. — Yoon Ha Lee

A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the dissection of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight... — Allen Shawn

It takes a very long time to sever a marriage in which children are involved. There is a table, two chairs, and a small pile of bargaining chips. This is how it begins, but it ends with one chair in an empty room. The days darken. The children are slices open and split down the middle. Someone takes an arm; someone takes a foot. The car pulling into the driveway on a Friday afternoon becomes a hearse, and everything is couched in lies. The house of old assumes a silence. — Kate Mulgrew

Be faithful in small things because it is in them your strength lies. — Mother Teresa

As soon as science has emerged from its initial stages, theoretical advances are no longer achieved merely by a process of arrangement. Guided by empirical data, the investigator rather develops a system of thought which, in general, is built up logically from a small number of fundamental assumptions, the so-called axioms. We call such a system of thought a theory. The theory finds the justification for its existence in the fact that it correlates a large number of single observations, and it is just here that the 'truth' of the theory lies. — Albert Einstein

Every infantryman in the Soviet Army carries with him a small spade. When he is given the order to halt he immediately lies flat and starts to dig a hole in the ground beside him. — Viktor Suvorov

And just like that, your big, black lies grow small and white. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

I don't want my life to not be the way I expected.
I may not be scared of crowds. Or the dark. Or small spaces. But I am afraid.
I am afraid of responsibility; I am afraid of not living up to expectations, of the changing future, of growing up, not knowing, sex, relationships, hardship, secrets, grades, judgement, falling short, loneliness, change, confusion, arguments, curiosity, love, hate, losing, pressure, differences, honesty, lies.
I am afraid of me.
Yet, despite this, I know I am brave. I know I am brave because I've accepted my invisible fears and haven't let them overcome me.
I want you to know that you're brave because you know your fears. You're brave because you introduced yourself. You're brave because you said 'No, I don't understand.' You're brave because you are here. — Emily Trunko

Lying in small doses makes a good storyteller great. — Bryan Way

Duiri Tal, a small lake, lies cradled on the hill above Okhimath, at a height of 8,000 feet. It was a favourite spot of one of Garhwal's earliest British Commissioners, J.H. Batten, whose administration continued for twenty years (1836-56). He wrote: The day I reached there, it was snowing and young trees were laid prostrate under the weight of snow; the lake was frozen over to a depth of about two inches. There was no human habitation, and the place looked a veritable wilderness. The next morning when the sun appeared, the Chaukhamba and many other peaks extending as far as Kedarnath seemed covered with a new quilt of snow, as if close at hand. The whole scene was so exquisite that one could not tire of gazing at it for hours. I think a person who has a subdued settled despair in his mind would all of a sudden feel a kind of bounding and exalting cheerfulness which will be imparted to his frame by the atmosphere of Duiri Tal. This — Ruskin Bond

Please, Kenzie, Jonah thought. Please, please, please back off from this. His life wasn't much, but it was all he had, this small safe space, walled in by secrets. — Cinda Williams Chima

A large part of the art of instruction lies in making the difficulty of new problems large enough to challenge thought, and small enough so that, in addition to the confusion naturally attending the novel elements, there shall be luminous familiar spots from which helpful suggestions may spring. — John Dewey

Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop. — Thomas Harris

Very small investments can release the infinite potential that lies in all of us. — Jacqueline Novogratz

But here is what I tell my own daughters, when they start to place all of the magic outside of themselves, when they start to feel like some random dude owns the sun and the moon and the stars:

The world has told you lies about how small you are. — Heather Havrilesky

A child dragging bent useless legs is crawling up the hill outside the village. Nose to the stones, goat dung, and muddy trickles, she pulls herself along like a broken cricket. We falter, ashamed of our strong step, and noticing this, she gazes up, clear-eyed, without resentment - it seems much worse that she is pretty. In Bengal, GS says stiffly, beggars will break their children's knees to achieve this pitiable effect for business purposes: this is his way of expressing his distress. But the child that lies here at our boots is not a beggar; she is merely a child, staring in curiosity at tall, white strangers. I long to give her something - a new life? - yet am afraid to tamper with such dignity. And so I smile as best I can, and say "Namas-te!" "Good morning!" How absurd! And her voice follows as we go away, a small clear smiling voice - "Namas-te!" - a Sanskrit word for greeting and parting that means, "I salute you". — Peter Matthiessen

I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its nakedness, but the others are able to cover it with a veil so delicate, so daintily woven with small plausible lies, that there is some pleasure to be found in contemplating this ingenious work of the human intelligence. — Alexis De Tocqueville

What is negotiation but the accumulation of small lies leading to advantage? — Felix Dennis

Be faithful in the little things, for in them our strength lies. To the good God nothing is little, because He is so great and we are so small. — Mother Teresa

Satan is screaming lies over us all day long. And God whispers the truth is a still, small voice. So often the voice we listen to most is the one we hear loudest. — Steven Curtis Chapman

Mary's Song

Blue homespun and the bend of my breast
keep warm this small hot naked star
fallen to my arms. (Rest...
you who have had so far
to come.) Now nearness satisfies
the body of God sweetly. Quiet he lies
whose vigor hurled
a universe. He sleeps
whose eyelids have not closed before.
His breath (so slight it seems
no breath at all) once ruffled the dark deeps
to sprout a world.
Charmed by doves' voices, the whisper of straw,
he dreams,
hearing no music from his other spheres.
Breath, mouth, ears, eyes
he is curtailed
who overflowed all skies,
all years.
Older than eternity, now he
is new. Now native to earth as I am, nailed
to my poor planet, caught that I might be free,
blind in my womb to know my darkness ended,
brought to this birth
for me to be new-born,
and for him to see me mended
I must seen him torn. — Luci Shaw

True success - financial, personal, and professional - lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff. In valuing legacy over currency. — Gary Vaynerchuk

Wilson argued that "the wealth of America" lay in its small businesses, its towns and villages. "Its vitality does not lie in New York, nor in Chicago," he asserted; "it will not be sapped by anything that happens in St. Louis. The vitality of America lies in the brains, the energies, the enterprise of the people throughout the land; in the efficiency of their factories and in the richness of the fields that stretch beyond the borders of the town. — Doris Kearns Goodwin

Life had taught her that we all require big and small lies in order to survive, just as much as we need air. She used to say that if during one single day, from dawn to dusk, we could see the naked reality of the world, and of ourselves, we would either take our own lives or lose our minds. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

But the irony: Don't I often want to desperately wriggle free of the confines of a small life? Yet when I stand before immensity that heightens my smallness--I have never felt sadness. Only burgeoning wonder. Is it because within each frame of finite flesh lies the likeness of infinite God? In all things large and spectacular, we recognize glimpses of home and the call to our own deeper chemistry. Do we writhe to peel out of our smallness and into the big life because that fits our inborn God-image? — Ann Voskamp

Scientists at first were skeptical that a kitten-type being could exist in the rare Martian atmosphere. As a test, two Earth kittens were put in a chamber that simulated the Martian air. The diary of this experiment is fascinating:
6:00 A.M.: Kittens appear to sleep.
7:02 A.M.: Kitten wakes, darts from one end of cage to another for no apparent reason.
7:14 A.M.: Kitten runs up wall of cage, leaps onto other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:22 A.M.: Kitten lies on back and punches other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:30 A.M.: Kitten leaps, stops, darts left, abruptly stops, climbs wall, clings for two seconds, falls on head, darts right for no apparent reason.
7:51 A.M.: Kitten parses first sentence of daily newspaper that is at bottom of chamber.
With the exception of the parsing, all behavior is typical of Earth kitten behavior. The parsing activity, which was done with a small ball-point pen, was an anomaly. — Steve Martin

MUSINGS
The little poets sing of little things:
Hope, cheer, and faith, small queens and puppet kings;
Lovers who kissed and then were made as one,
And modest flowers waving in the sun.
The mighty poets write in blood and tears
And agony that, flame-like, bites and sears.
They reach their mad blind hands into the night,
To plumb abysses dead to human sight;
To drag from gulfs where lunacy lies curled,
Mad, monstrous nightmare shapes to blast the world.
[click on the thumbnail by Jack "King" Kirby] — Robert E. Howard

A bug lies in quiet repose;
when he passed no one knows.
Did he suffer, was he pained?
Before he died, was knowledge gained?
Were all life's pressures much too great.To put upon so small a weight?
Although not one for pessimism,
I think he died of journalism! — Nikhil Sharda

I wonder where he lies. Wedged under a rock, with a thousand small mouths already sucking on his spongy flesh. Or floating still, on and down, on and down, to wider, calmer reaches of the river. I see them gathering: the drowned, the shot. Their hands float out to touch each other, fingertip to fingertip. In a day, two days, they will glide on, a funeral flotilla, past the unfinished white dome rising out of its scaffolds on a muddy hill in Washington. Will the citizens recognize them, the brave fallen, and uncover in a gesture of respect? Or will they turn away, disgusted by the bloated mass of human rot? — Geraldine Brooks

A happy love is a single story, a disintegrating one is two or more competing, conflicting versions, and a disintegrated one lies at your feet like a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a different story, that it was wonderful, that it was terrible, if only this had, if only that hadn't. The stories don't fit back together, and it's the end of stories, those devices we carry like shells and shields and blinkers and occasionally maps and compasses. The people close to you become mirrors and journals in which you record your history, the instruments that help you know yourself and remember yourself, and you do the same for them. When they vanish so does the use, the appreciation, the understanding of those small anecdotes, catchphrases, jokes: they become a book slammed shut or burnt. — Rebecca Solnit

Alberta was back again. Back to it all, to all that was warped and desultory, to the lies and evasions and small, hidden irons in the fire, to humiliation and hopeless longing, to the grey road of uniform days.
To live in spite of it, to live on as best she could, with her two warring natures: one that willed, no-one knew how far - one that could let itself be bound any time and anywhere. To live and lie and listen her way forward, to seek haphazardly in her tomes, to wait and see... — Cora Sandel

It is the phenomenon somethings called "alienation from self." In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home. — Joan Didion

Under Small's influence Jefferson came to share Immanuel Kant's 1784 definition of the spirit of the era: "Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity," Kant wrote.21 "Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. — Jon Meacham

She lies awake in the small hours. On the bedside table is a Moon Tiger. The Moon Tiger is a green coil that slowly burns all night, repelling mosquitoes, dropping away into lengths of grey ash, its glowing red eye a companion of the hot insect-rasping darkness. She lies there thinking of nothing, simply being, her whole body content. Another inch of the Moon Tiger feathers down into the saucer. — Penelope Lively

The day has been so full of fret and care, and our hearts have been so full of evil and of bitter thoughts, and the world has seemed so hard and wrong to us. Then Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand upon our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained faces up to hers, and smiles; and though she does not speak, we know what she would say, and lay our hot flushed cheek against her bosom, and the pain is gone.
Sometimes, our pain is very deep and real, and we stand before her very silent, because there is no language for our pain, only a moan. Night's heart is full of pity for us: she cannot ease our aching; she takes our hand in hers, and the little world grows very small and very far away beneath us, and, borne on her dark wings, we pass for a moment into a mightier Presence than her own, and in the wondrous light of that great Presence, all human life lies like a book before us, and we know that Pain and Sorrow are but angels of God. — Jerome K. Jerome

Srinagar is a medieval city dying in a modern war. It is empty streets, locked shops, angry soldiers and boys with stones. It is several thousand military bunkers, four golf courses, and three book-shops. It is wily politicians repeating their lies about war and peace to television cameras and small crowds gathered by the promise of an elusive job or a daily fee of a few hundred rupees. It is stopping at sidewalks and traffic lights when the convoys of rulers and their patrons in armored cars, secured by machine guns, rumble on broken roads. It is staring back or looking away, resigned. Srinagar is never winning and never being defeated. — Basharat Peer

Life managed without males for its first billion years, much of which was passed as single cells in a series of warm ponds. Then, in some ancient and neutral Eden, the fruit of the tree of sexual knowledge - a new mutation - persuaded members of a particular clone to fuse with cells from another, and then to divide. That ingenious idea is good news for the novel gene, as it doubles its rate of spread, but is a lot less so for those who receive it, who are obliged to copy the extra DNA. At once, two factions emerge, one keen to force itself upon the other. Thus sex was invented.
Soon one contestant began to cheat. Large cells are expensive, but are better at dividing because they have more food reserves. Small cells are cheaper to make, but cannot afford to split. Their sole chance of success hence lies in fusion with a large cell. The first males had appeared on the scene. — Steve Jones

There are many kinds of betrayals. There are the small ones: the unkind word, the laughter behind someone's back, the petty lies. And there are the betrayals that break hearts, destroy worlds, and turn the strong, sweet light of day into bitter dust. — Gillian Shields

Does it make sense to pray for guidance about the future if we are not obeying in the thing that lies before us today? How many momentous events in Scripture depended on one person's seemingly small act of obedience! Rest assured: Do what God tells you to do now, and, depend upon it, you will be shown what to do next. — Elisabeth Elliot

It was called 'We Wear the Mask', by Paul Laurence Dunbar. I transcribed the first stanza and then started jotting down my reaction to it.

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes, -
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

I used to wear masks so subtle I barely noticed them. A compliment to my mother after a dismal meal, a smile at my best friend when she sang out of tune, a forced laugh at my uncle's bad jokes. I wore small masks that came and went, like fleeting expressions.

I am stuck inside the mask I wear now. I want to rip it off. I want to show my scars to the world, to unveil the ugliness that breathes inside me. I want to be unashamed. I want to be unafraid. But every day the mask gets tighter, and I suffocate a little more.

I stopped writing. — Catherine Doyle

Whether it is under the guise of survival and self-defence or directly expressed through dominion and greed, the failure to recognize the common humanity shared by us all lies at the heart of our difficulties. To overcome it, we should begin to develop, from the level of the individual through that of society to the world at large, what I call a sense of universal responsibility; a deep respect for every living being who lives on this one small planet and calls it home. — Dalai Lama